Wondering about VPN speed..

[thatguy]

Hey there folks--

I'm wondering about the speed of my VPN connection to a remote office. I've got a Sonicwall PRO2040 at the main office and a TZ170 at the remote. We've got a 1408k T1 link out of the main and a 512K T1 out of the remote.

A best-guess estimate would be around 2.5MB/min transfer rate with no one else on the wire. I'm wondering if this is slow, average or (I can't imagine) fast. We've got a couple users over there now and they complain, as anyone would, about slow performance connecting to data on the Win2k server at the main.

Could anyone lend an opinion or recommend a good benchmarking technique/program to check things out?

thanks
-- frank~

 

[bf0x]

Your VPN connection is only as fast as your slowest link and the number of users on the pipe.

So if you have 512K on one side of the pipe then that would be your weakest link.

Also note that if these links are used for other traffic such as HTTP or FTP then that too will cause the bandwidth to be even lower. I am not sure of a bench marking tool other than to do a file transfer from the server back to the remote PC and see what transfer rate you get. From what you are describing I can see why they are complaining but thats VPN. If VPN does not seem like the solution that best fits you then you may want to get a dedicated Line and connect the two offices with routers with dedicated internet connections at both sites to send HTTP out a different circuit. Just a suggestion.

 

[Castor66]

Check your MTU sizes as well - you may be getting fragmentation.

Also, check on the apps that the users are working with. You may have a rogue app that needs to open a huge file or Access database.